


When the Engines Come, They Come Too Soon

by Birdbitch



Category: X-Men: First Class (Comics)
Genre: Gay Mutant Road Trip, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 17:16:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20157205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbitch/pseuds/Birdbitch
Summary: Every place they go, Charles and Erik are given a room with two beds.





	When the Engines Come, They Come Too Soon

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of sad about the future of the X-Men.   
I keep thinking I should update my other in-progress fic but somethings are more important. Like other stories.

They'll always be given rooms with two beds, Charles has found. He's under the spray of a weak showerhead, dull migraine at the back of his skull from sifting through so many different brains. It's usually easier, he thinks. It hasn't bothered him like this in years. But he's tired, and the man at the front desk of the hotel (minor splurge) gave him and Erik another room with two beds.

Does anything help with it? Erik asked about the first migraine, a week into their mutant roadtrip. 

Blackout curtains and heavy duty earmuffs, he said. Even then it's just a way to dull sensory overload; usually that's the source. 

Erik's thumbs pressing into the knots at the top of Charles’ back don't hurt with reducing the pain, either, and they're better than the showerhead. “I'm tired,” he says, even though he tilts his head to let Erik mouth at the side of his neck. Not so tired after all. 

Erik thinks he's absolutely lovely, and the feelings sink into him not so much as overload but as a comfort. Honeymooners is what this roadtrip has felt like, except Charles has heard what actual honeymooners think, and is convinced that the underlying resentment some of them have for each other (to have settled down, like their options have been suddenly cut down for them by marriage) is something he and Erik will never feel for each other. Not like that, at any rate. 

“Too tired?” Erik asks, one hand wrapping around to Charles’s front, palm flat on his chest and pulling him closer. Oh, no, he thinks, projects, not too tired for this. Tired enough to not even want to go through the effort of verbalizing what he can just  _ show _ , which he does show, before twisting so he can kiss Erik and do the pressing himself, of Erik against the shower wall. 

He feels the spray of water stop, hears Erik turning the knob without touching it, and even that’s—it’s still attractive, doesn’t stop being attractive. Charles never really thought himself as attracted to power, but it’s attached to Erik, which makes it much more like. Like Raven looking at the muscular men in bodybuilding competitions, he thinks. Their strength is a turn-on; Erik’s strength is, too, albeit in a different capacity than those men. And Erik is possessive, in a very good way. He knows how to grab Charles just right and make him feel—not like something temporary, even though he knows that Erik doesn’t have plans to stick around. Charles still thinks, at this point, that he can change Erik’s mind. We could live like this, he thinks, a little loudly, though it’s always ever just images of the two of them, idyllic. Waking up in bed together, sheets tangled around their waists, though at an actual home, not just the motels and hotels they’ve been staying in. Charles and Erik taking breakfast together. Running a school for others like them. 

Of course, Erik doesn’t really respond to those images because they’re not included explicitly in the projection that Charles has, even when he’s getting fucked so well that he’s not entirely capable of controlling how far his brain reaches out. And Erik, so far, is the only person who’s been able to do that. Maybe he’s the only person whose mind Charles has been able to see so clearly, the only person whose mind has been—so beautiful. It’s not just the power thing. They stumble out of the bathroom and onto the nearest of the beds. (One benefit, of the two beds, is that they always have a dry one to go onto next.) 

Charles likes the manhandling, sends thoughts—explicit ones—to Erik to encourage him alongside his voice. They’ll be run out of town one of these days, he thinks, because Erik draws so many noises from him, knows exactly how long Charles needs to be prepared to take him, and then exactly how to push Charles’s shoulders down while fucking him. This does, he’s found, help with the sensory overload, because his entire world narrows down to Erik, to the man who turns him onto his back, looks at him like he’s something miraculous, brushes his hair back and kisses him while continuing to thrust, pulling small noises from Charles’s throat with each movement. 

It’s not enough to say that he’s in love with Erik—he doesn’t know that he’s known him long enough (though it feels like forever), and he’s also not sure how much stock he puts into romantic love as it is. Not hearing what people think about the people they’re supposed to love, at any rate. But. There’s tenderness in these moments post-coitus where Erik carefully lifts Charles like he’s something precious, brings him to the other bed, and then gets in next to him. There’s also a part of Charles that’s fairly aware of how untenable this kind of relationship may be. Erik burns so hot and so bright that Charles is half certain that he’ll kill himself—like he almost did that first night. He gets overwhelmed again, kisses Erik’s temple, pulls him close, and Erik lets him. Says, “Charles, I’m here, aren’t I?” Turns them, fucks Charles again as if that’s a real promise that he’s going to still be there tomorrow without having taken off to kill Shaw by himself. 

“We go back to D.C. soon,” Charles says, and Erik nods his head. 

Two beds are better than two rooms, Charles thinks. 

Erik catches his drift. “It’s up to you if we continue,” he says, and then leaves the bed. 

Charles thinks, Erik, come back, and shivers before tucking himself under the covers. Erik, Erik, Erik. They could do it together, he knows. Could teach all of these younger mutants, could teach each other. The migraine is starting to come back as Charles's mind unfocuses and starts catching the thoughts of everyone else. It's an effort not to listen, just like in a crowded bar it's an effort not to eavesdrop when you don't have someone else you're talking to. "Erik," he says, reaching his arm out. "There's always an excuse to be made for sharing a room, and I'm sure they'd believe it if I told them it might help budget the program better."

"Of course they would," Erik responds. Close—Charles's fingertip brushes against his thigh over the edge of the bed. Not close enough. "It shouldn't be their program to worry about in the first place."

He won't argue. It hasn't been worth it, not thinking as he does that he can persuade Erik to see his point of view. "Come to bed?"

The thought escapes stray: Wish you wouldn't trust so easily, or something to that effect. Charles sighs, rolls over, waits for the mattress to dip. Erik's arm slings itself over his midsection, tugs Charles to him possessively. No desire to share him with the US federal law enforcement bureaus, or any government on earth. Charles rubs his thumb over the back of Erik's hand. 

A plan forms easily, so smooth it feels less like a "plan" and more anticipation of future events. Not so many have authorization for the program. When Charles wanted Raven as a sister, it was as though she had always been a member of the Xavier household, ingrained. Permanent—and Charles is better with his powers now than then, could surely implant in everyone recognition that he and Erik have always operated as a single unit. That it makes no sense to be separate. Though their students would also be put in shared rooms. Charles feels selfish enough not to care. It's a temporary location as it stands. 

Of course, it doesn't work out that way. 

He feels the waves of despair rolling off Alex, the fear from Hank and Sean, Raven's anger. Erik's frustration, mutedly, knowing he wishes he had been there, but not for the same reason Charles does. They must move; Charles owns his family home. 

It's not the sleek apartment he'd envisioned living with Erik in. There's so much pain wrapped up in having to come back, but knowing he can rework it into a place of acceptance—like he had for Raven, he supposes—negates some of it. Doesn't change that it happened. "I wanted to get as far away as possible," he says to Erik, staring at the chessboard. 

"No charmed childhood existence?" Erik asks. The wine's a vintage; it's neither of their preferred drink, but it exists, so they drink it anyway. 

"I thought I was mad for the first twelve years of my life and couldn't figure out what was wrong with me." Memories of his stepfather—he doesn't mean to let them slip, for Erik to see, but the shape of them does anyway. "And then I knew, and there was Raven."

"Could you have stopped him?"

"Looking back? Perhaps. I didn't know how. It was easier—my mother always wanted a daughter." He doesn't want to finish the game. "At any rate, it's much quieter out here, and there's space."

"And fewer eyes."

"Yes—yes, that too, though I wasn't imagining ever bringing you to my childhood bedroom." 

"I'm sure you were very precocious."

"Oh," Charles says, because Erik is unguarded now, and wants him rather openly, reveling in the idea of a virginal version of himself, deflowered several times over. "You know, if you leave, you don't get to enjoy that."

He smiles at him, sharp. "Enjoy what?" 

There’s a part of him which thinks, the children are in bed, we have the evening to ourselves—and he tilts his head, looks at Erik with half-lidded eyes, and puts him in check. He won’t win (at least he’s not particularly planning on it), but he also doesn’t have to. Erik gets distracted, stands up and walks around the chessboard, and holds Charles’s head still, jaw in one hand, neck in the other, and kisses him. Firmly. Not deeply, not really—though Charles can’t help but sigh into it, can’t help but open his mouth and try to get Erik to open his, too. The children are in bed. Let’s go back to my room. Not the master bedroom, which has been converted into a laboratory, but Charles’s actual room, with its bookcase walls and its fireplace and its modest (“modest”) bed. Enough room for the two of them, at least, and not much more than that. 

“This could become permanent, I suppose,” he says, looking at the windows, at the land surrounding the manor. “Though you’d probably prefer an island in the middle of nowhere.” 

“There’s plenty about civilization which I enjoy,” Erik says. 

“I’m sure.” Charles turns to look at him again and feels himself about to beg, clamps down on the impulse. He sighs and closes his eyes instead. Being back here has him feeling strangely morose. In some ways, it must be worse than the hotel and motel rooms; a different expectation for where each of them are supposed to be at night, in the morning, either. Moira’s visits keep him somewhat on edge, worried that while the CIA will permit mutants of one kind, they may not particularly embrace this part of him, a part which everyone is willing to ignore or look past either because he’s had money or because he’s in some way projected otherwise. Until recently, Raven really was the only one who knew him.   
Erik noses at his neck before kissing him again. “Are we done playing for the night?” he asks, and Charles nods, pushes Erik back so he can stand up. 

But the melancholy of being home (or not home) has seeped into Charles. “I’m going to shower first,” he says, forcing a smile. 

“I could join you,” Erik suggests. And Charles knows exactly what he means by joining him, knows that it’s never just washing the places on his back which Charles can’t reach well enough on his own. “I believe you thought so yourself—the children, after all, are in bed. Is that how things are done here?”

“Didn’t realize I had been quite so loud,” he says. “Well, come on then, if you’re going to join me.” It would be so nice if this could just go on, he thinks, though he knows this house well enough to know that there’s an impossibility to him getting exactly what he wants from it, exactly when he wants it. 


End file.
